What brings music's biggest acts to play tiny Belly Up Aspen?

The Flaming Lips will play Belly Up Aspen on New Year's Eve. (Photos by Michael McGrath, Special to The Denver Post)

Right after the Flaming Lips played in Tasmania, Australia, on New Year's Eve 2012, singer Wayne Coyne got a text from Michael Goldberg, the owner of Belly Up Aspen.

"He texted me and said, 'How did it go?' And before I could say, 'We're still drunk from the night before,' he was, like, 'You gotta play here,' " Coyne said. "I kinda liked that."

In 2005, Goldberg opened the Belly Up, a 450-capacity club, in Aspen — three and a half hours from Denver by car.

"That's the dilemma of Aspen altogether, but it also makes it kind of cool," Coyne said of Belly Up's location. "You're kind of in this place that's almost impossible to get to unless you make some pretty serious arrangements."

Yet the club has played host to musicians such as Jimmy Buffett, Snoop Dogg, John Legend, Bassnectar, B.B. King and other acts that could sell out arenas twice the population of Aspen.

What is it about this little mountain club that brings in such big-name acts?

"It's mostly the guy who runs it," said Coyne, whose Grammy Award- winning psych-rock band returns to the venue for a New Year's Eve run on Dec. 30 and 31. "He's a cool guy, he's very interested in music and, in a good way, he's relentless."

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After spending 20 years in Miami in the aviation business and 25 years in Aspen, Goldberg got into the restaurant business and "after I lost my mind, I got into the music business," he said.

When Belly Up's predecessor, the Double Diamond, closed after a 10-year run, Goldberg decided to buy the spot and have some fun.

"It was a challenge — something else to do in life," Goldberg said. "I'm 64, and I like to try different things. I've certainly gotten younger since opening this thing."

Thanks to some strategic timing, Belly Up opened during X-Games 2005 and welcomed sets from G. Love and the Roots to break in the new venue.

"We were in the right place at the right time," Goldberg said. "It was crucial for us to open during the X-Games."

"In some ways you have to make a name to attract bands that wouldn't look at playing a 450-capacity room in the middle of the mountains where there's no college, not even a small radio station," Goldberg said.

Much of what attracts these artists is Aspen itself.

"I'd like to take credit for a lot of this, but frankly I'm not dumb enough," Goldberg said. "A lot of people will come here because it's Aspen, to make a vacation out of it."

Artists like Buffett and Seal will vacation in Aspen and play at Belly Up while visiting — sometimes they'll even use a show in town to pay for the trip. It's an area that is famously famous, and along with the glamour, it invites expensive tastes and a unique business model for Goldberg to operate Belly Up.

Ticket prices for some of these high-profile and intimate shows can range into the hundreds of dollars. Reserved seating for the Flaming Lips' New Year's Eve show next week, for example, is $675.

"There certainly is an aspect of Aspen that brings to town people who can afford to pay sometimes very high ticket prices, who can appreciate the intimacy," Goldberg said.

"It's not for everyone. Our ticket price is significantly higher. But it's a completely different experience to see those (musicians) on stage with 449 other people as opposed to 8,000 other people."

And the ticket price — though steep — is worth it, said Denver audio engineer and Mighty Fine Productions owner Colin Bricker, who has been to a number of Belly Up shows, including the Flaming Lips in 2010. Once the show starts, any monetary concerns disappear, he said.

"It's pretty magical," Bricker said of the intimate atmosphere. "Man, when you're 25 feet from the guys it's really exciting ... you feel the music in a different way."

From an engineering perspective, Bricker said the sound quality is amazing.

"It's super clean and still at a rock 'n' roll volume," he said.

But the location and the cost bring out a much different crowd than one is likely to find at the similarly-sized Bluebird Theater in Denver. It's a mix of die-hard fans and the super-wealthy, Bricker said.

"There was certainly a clash of culture," Bricker said. "There are definitely people in furs showing up."

For Coyne, whose band likes to "try different things," Belly Up offers an opportunity to play a New Year's Eve show that's small and simple.

"Playing at his place, the Belly Up, it's fun," Coyne said. "We're always playing to Flaming Lips fans, but when you play those bigger festivals you get people that might know one or two songs as opposed to when you play smaller shows and people know everything you've done."

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